Who said it would be easy for Danny to reconfigure this team from an aging contender to a younger version that still incorporates old players? He is trying to pull off a pretty tough task! We have lots of quality players ... just a lack of paint presence and harmony (yes harmony) in the way we play.

I avoided this post for a while because of the title, but it's refreshing to read some of the responses.

The ML Carr years! Yes, the days when I could get a seat on gameday for 10 dollars and I could walk up to the players on their way in or out of the garden and have long conversations with them, those where the days! David Wesley used to take the T to the game and walk into the sidedoor of the garden holding his sneakers. Never nervous Pervis driving a old beat up jeep would stop and talk to us for 45 minutes. Dino Radja would walk out of the locker room and over to the celtics bench DURING the national anthem and sign autographs along the way, smelling of cigarrettes. Antoine Walker thought he was already a hall of fame player and it was only a matter of time before his number would hang from the rafters. Yep, those were the days.

Rotation players, yes, but not franchise cornerstones by any means, which is what some people thought they were to us at the time. Gerald Green, Sebastian Telfair, Perkins, bi Al all were once considered untouchable by some people on here.

Certainly not even close to the worst team we've ever had by a long long long shot. However I will agree that there is no effort, no spark, and no desire from this team. A lot of blank stares and just constant not caring it seems like.

We need someone firey up front. Someone to get excited about the plays they make, someone to stare down a defender after a blocked shot, someone to take it to the rim hard, and make people think twice about coming into the lane.

Rotation players, yes, but not franchise cornerstones by any means, which is what some people thought they were to us at the time. Gerald Green, Sebastian Telfair, Perkins, bi Al all were once considered untouchable by some people on here.

What does that have to do with wanting them back? We had 3-4 cornerstones at that point, they would've been role players. Of course they were our cornerstones pre-big-3, that team sucked and people wanted to keep them because they were our only good players.

This team lost it's Pacifier. Ray Allen. He could wait patiently till Pierce or KG ran their luck out and pick up where they left off or just go off on his own. It will take years to re build this team. And that's with better Management.

we stopped being serious contenders in early 2011 when Shaq broke. Then we managed to overachieve, ride the last fumes of our stretch, draw a couple easy teams and make it to the ECF last year. We had been below .500 in the middle of last season. This year isn't much different. Wait until after the trade deadline to panic. This was all expected.

Disagree. From my perspective, we were very much a contender at the end of last season and in the playoffs.

I guess from your perspective in hindsight there's only ever one true contender.

I mean we snuck by a Horford-less Atlanta and a 8th seed Philly to suddenly find ourselves as one of the last 4 teams standing. In that respect, you could say we had a shot at a title. But there were several teams better than us last year. Much of the year we weren't even a .500 team. KG suddenly started dropping 20 and 10 every night and that definitely gave us a lift, but in general we haven't been a serious threat since Shaq hobbled off the court.

Hard to say last year's ECF visit was expected. I think it was widely acknowledged it was one of our most "improbable" runs ever. Sneaking into the ECF with a 59% win percentage... you have to go back to 1969 to find a Celtic team who overachieved that mightily in the playoffs. We were essentially just riding on the fumes of a once great team... the smell of KG, Ray and Pierce had yet to fully dissipate. That combined with a cake-walk path allowed us to get further than we had any right going. Miami was a bit shaky until Bosh returned and it looked like a window was there. We were just as likely to beat Miami as Philly was likely to beat us in the previous round. Usually the cream rises to the top.